Poems

©Stephanie Pui-Mun Law

The Road to Fairyland by Ernest Thompson Seton Do you seek the road to Fairyland I'll tell; it's easy, quite. Wait till a yellow moon gets up O'er purple seas by night, And gilds a shining pathway That is sparkling diamond bright Then, if no evil power be nigh To thwart you, out of spite, And if you know the very words To cast a spell of might, You get upon a thistledown, And, if the breeze is right, You sail away to Fairyland Along this track of light.

All I Want by Selina Fenech

The Fairy Child

Lord Dunsanay

From the low white walls and the church's steeple,

From our little fields under grass or grain,

I'm gone away to the fairy people

I shall not come to the town again.

You may see a girl with my face and tresses,

You may see one come to my mother's door

Who may speak my words and may wear my dresses.

She will not be I, for I come no more.

I am gone, gone far, with the fairies roaming,

You may ask of me where the herons are

In the open marsh when the snipe are homing,

Or when no moon lights nor a single star.

On stormy nights when the streams are foaming

And a hint may come of my haunts afar,

With the reeds my floor and my roof the gloaming,

But I come no more to Ballynar.

Ask Father Ryan to read no verses

To call me back, for I am this day

From blessings far, and beyond curses.

No heaven shines where we ride away.

At speed unthought of in all your stables,

With the gods of old and the sons of Finn,

With the queens that reigned in the olden fables

And kings that won what a sword can win.

You may hear us streaming above your gables

On nights as still as a planet's spin;

But never stir from your chairs and tables

To call my name. I shall not come in.

For I am gone to the fairy people.

Make the most of that other child

Who prays with you by the village steeple

I am gone away to the woods and wild.

I am gone away to the open spaces,

And whither riding no man may tell;

But I shall look upon all your faces

No more in Heaven or Earth or Hell.

The Hosting of the Sidhe

by WB Yeats

The host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;
Caolite tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are agleam,
Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caolite tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away.

The Man who Dreamt of Faeryland

by WB Yeats He stood among a crowd at Dromahair;
His heart hung all upon a silken dress,
And he had known at last some tenderness,
Before earth took him to her stony care;
But when a man poured fish into a pile,
It Seemed they raised their little silver heads,
And sang what gold morning or evening sheds
Upon a woven world-forgotten isle
Where people love beside the ravelled seas;
That Time can never mar a lover's vows
Under that woven changeless roof of boughs:
The singing shook him out of his new ease.
He wandered by the sands of Lissadell;
His mind ran all on money cares and fears,
And he had known at last some prudent years
Before they heaped his grave under the hill;
But while he passed before a plashy place,
A lug-worm with its grey and muddy mouth
Sang that somewhere to north or west or south
There dwelt a gay, exulting, gentle race
Under the golden or the silver skies;
That if a dancer stayed his hungry foot
It seemed the sun and moon were in the fruit:
And at that singing he was no more wise.
He mused beside the well of Scanavin,
He mused upon his mockers: without fail
His sudden vengeance were a country tale,
When earthy night had drunk his body in;
But one small knot-grass growing by the pool
Sang where -- unnecessary cruel voice --
Old silence bids its chosen race rejoice,
Whatever ravelled waters rise and fall
Or stormy silver fret the gold of day,
And midnight there enfold them like a fleece
And lover there by lover be at peace.
The tale drove his fine angry mood away.
He slept under the hill of Lugnagall;
And might have known at last unhaunted sleep
Under that cold and vapour-turbaned steep,
Now that the earth had taken man and all:
Did not the worms that spired about his bones
proclaim with that unwearied, reedy cry
That God has laid His fingers on the sky,
That from those fingers glittering summer runs
Upon the dancer by the dreamless wave.
Why should those lovers that no lovers miss
Dream, until God burn Nature with a kiss?
The man has found no comfort in the grave.

Today a Fairy Blessed me

Today a Fairy blessed me

and danced upon these walls

Left a scent of roses

as she beckoned to my calls

Gave me comfort, and wiped my tears

blessed my mind of all those fears

Touched my eyes so I could see

Whispered softly, "Blessed Be"

I'd Love to be a Fairy's Child
By
Robert Graves

Children born of fairy stock
Never need for shirt or frock,
Never want for food or fire,
Always get their hearts desire:
Jingle pockets full of gold,
Marry when they're seven years old.
Every fairy child may keep
Two ponies and ten sheep;
All have houses, each his own,
Built of brick or granite stone;
They live on cherries, they run wild--
I'd love to be a Fairy's child.

Fairy-Land

by Edgar Allan Poe

Dim vales- and shadowy floods-
And cloudy-looking woods,
Whose forms we can't discover
For the tears that drip all over!
Huge moons there wax and wane-
Again- again- again-
Every moment of the night-
Forever changing places-
And they put out the star-light
With the breath from their pale faces.
About twelve by the moon-dial,
One more filmy than the rest
(A kind which, upon trial,
They have found to be the best)
Comes down- still down- and down,
With its centre on the crown
Of a mountain's eminence,
While its wide circumference
In easy drapery falls
Over hamlets, over halls,
Wherever they may be-
O'er the strange woods- o'er the sea-
Over spirits on the wing-
Over every drowsy thing-
And buries them up quite
In a labyrinth of light-
And then, how deep!- O, deep!
Is the passion of their sleep.
In the morning they arise,
And their moony covering
Is soaring in the skies,
With the tempests as they toss,
Like- almost anything-
Or a yellow Albatross.
They use that moon no more
For the same end as before-
Videlicet, a tent-
Which I think extravagant:
Its atomies, however,
Into a shower dissever,
Of which those butterflies
Of Earth, who seek the skies,
And so come down again,
(Never-contented things!)
Have brought a specimen
Upon their quivering wings

Our lives begin to end the day we become

silent about things that matter.
Dr. Martin Luther King